A Chain Link Fence in Russia
by thewonderpen
Summary: An unstable Natasha sets off to find her parents before realizing that she may require more assistance that first believed from her married best friend. Set right after Winter Soldier. Canon.


**This is based on the deleted scene from Civil War where Natasha tells Steve how she went searching for her parents after SHIELD fell.**

 **So this one shot crosses a very delicate moral line and I wondered what people would think of it. Please leave a comment as they are very much appreciated!**

 **Trigger Warnings- Very brief and mild talk of suicide, death of a loved one**

It began with dim hopes, Natasha was sure of that. Every logically-thinking fiber of her body knew to keep her expectations in check. Still, in true childlike fashion, she would grapple with the idea of maybe finding her parents alive and well. She saw them living in a suburban condominium outside of Stalingrad old and retired after spending a lifetime searching for their missing piece that would make their family whole once again. It was uncharacteristically wishful thinking on her part.

Regardless of the outcome, when she left Steve in the graveyard she had every intention of finding her parents. She ended up in a safehouse in Panama with thirteen missed calls from Clint. If she called her best friend he would leave his family at the farm and come to her all while insisting he be included on this journey. Clint would help her research, give helpful suggestions on where to uncover their next clue, he'd make sure she was emotionally prepared to what lie ahead, and most importantly he'd be there when this excursion would end in ultimate tragedy. Clint could be a vital player in this, if Natasha was willing to answer his phone calls.

Natasha sat with her sweat-soaked hair clipped haphazardly off her face, she'd abandoned the notion of shorts hours ago and was left in underwear and a tank top. She had one leg stretched across a worn couch and the other bent just in front of the laptop she'd been studying. Natasha had begun with the now public SHIELD files to see if there had been any information she didn't yet know on the Red Room. After proving unsuccessful, she risked hacking into a Russian government base of digital citizen's records.

"Your server isn't the most secure Nat, you need to be more careful, it's not like you're not wanted by every country in the world right now," Clint spoke rather clearly for someone who was over three thousand miles away. Natasha settled that at some point in this extreme heat her mind gifted her with a voice of reason who coincidentally favored Barton's speech patterns.

For reasons Natasha couldn't explain she responded aloud to the hallucinated voice of Clint Barton, "If you see other possible ways to getting this done I'm open to hearing them."

"You could have found a network with a thicker firewall, your South American hideaway shack doesn't exactly give you the options you need, such as the set up I've got at our farm," her brain responded.

"Don't insult my shack, Barton. And don't call it 'our' farm, it belongs to you and Laura and your children."

"Is this about Laura? Is that why you haven't been answering my calls? Laura loves when you're around, Nat, you don't have to worry about not being welcomed."

Natasha ran a frustrated hand through her hair. "It's not that Barton," she looks down blankly unaware of why she is talking to an empty room- she continues, "SHIELD just fell Barton, everything we've worked so hard for these past years, all the wrongs I've been trying to make right- now I don't even know if they were just adding to my red. It bothers me, Clint. I want to see you, I want you and I to sit together while you listen to all of this. When finish I want you to put an arm around me while I rest my head on your shoulder then after we've sat in silence for a while I want you to kiss me, passionately while reminding me of all the ways that you're with me. Then I want to lead you to a bed and show you all the ways that I am yours."

She practically heard him scratch the back of his neck like he did when he was nervous. Natasha put her head in her hands and sighed. "I can't do that though, because your my _platonic_ friend," she spat accusingly.

"Nat," her mind whispered in that Clint-like voice.

"Don't say anything. I'm having a bit a breakdown through all of this, and I need to wait to get over it for me to see you again or I'll start something we'll both regret."

Her conscience listened and remained quiet. She looked up, realizing how eerily silent the room was, it was deafening and she despised it. She slammed the laptop shut and and leaned back to rest her head. She was probably overheating or dehydrated, or having some kind of elongated psychological meltdown. None of that would help in this matter with the uncontrolled feelings for Barton that were surfacing.

A few weeks later Natasha found herself in opposite conditions, level-headed and freezing cold. In a thin jacket thrown over her navy scoop neck shirt, her boots crunched against the gravel. It was actually a rather average early spring day and she was appropriately dressed. However she was found herself in the only location associated with her parents, a small poor town less than an hour from Stalingrad. That thought chilled her to her very core.

The town was once a popular family-friendly neighborhood that thrived by the hands of the lucrative factories just outside the city limits. When the factories slowly went bankrupt the town quickly became disgraced and the population dwindled. She wandered the streets until she got to a main town square, marked by an increase in abandoned buildings. The scenery was depressing and the attitude seeped into Natasha. The few people she did see were gray and creased by a difficult life. She wasn't sure where she was going but she wanted to experience what her parents may have experienced. She wandered into a grocery and then a liquor store. She passed by a secondhand shop and decided against going inside when she heard two women arguing from the outside. Her morning was spent in a walk from town to the outskirts where her destination was met, a graveyard.

She made a slow and relaxed entrance into the manager's office. An overweight older man gave a dim smile upon noticing Natasha's presence. "Могу ли я помочь вам не хватает?" _(Can I help you miss?)_

Natasha gave a cordial smile before slipping into a cover, "Я здесь из европейского гражданина рекорд фирмы и мне нужна информация на пару думали , чтобы быть похороненным здесь" ( _I am here from a European citizen records firm and I need information on a couple thought to be buried here)._

The manager was more than happy to give Natasha what she requested after flashing a smile. It was obvious he didn't receive many visitors as he continually tried to make small talk with Natasha as he flipped through a dusty old binder. The man was oblivious to the impact the next few seconds would have on Natasha's life and it was her personal duty to give no indication that she was affected by the fact that the manager just stopped turning pages and was now humming thoughtfully.

He looked up at Natasha and spoke, "И Влад и Нина похоронены здесь. Он говорит , что тело Нины было погружено ей около двадцати пяти лет назад по просьбе мужа . Она умерла от тяжелых ожогов от пожара и Влад умер около десяти лет назад здесь, в городе . Причина смерти неизвестна." _(Both Vlad and Nina are buried here. It says that Nina's body was shipped here about twenty-five years ago at her husband's request. She died of severe burns from a house fire and Vlad died about ten years ago here in town. The cause of death is unknown.)_

Natasha heard everything the man just said, she heard his words and the sound he made when he scratched his beard while he talked. It was all so… clear. So what was it that had her frozen place and freezing cold. It was illogical when she thought about it, to get emotional over two people she only had a couple of hazy memories of. Granted in each memory she'd remember a smile or laugh or the smell of good food, with the exception of the fire. The fire where she had been kidnapped by her new orphanage, the same fire that had apparently claimed the life of her mother. Mother, mom- suddenly the word wasn't just technical it was an emotional plea for something she no longer had.

Before creating a suspicious pause, Natasha managed to request to know the location of the graves so she could document the sight for records. Whatever explanation she mustered out probably sounded fake, but neither she nor the manager cared. He gave her quick instructions to find her destination, to the northwest corner by the chain link fence.

He was still giving her best wishes when she left the ratty office. She was on autopilot, as she was not going to breakdown at a Russian cemetery. She was going to call Clint, her phone was already in her hand. If she had a mother she would have advised Natasha against calling a married man for comfort, a mom would call it bad manners. Then again a mother wouldn't have let vile creatures teach her to use her body in every inappropiate way possible, a mother would have taught her how to make proper friends as a girl instead of how to murder them. A mom would cry when her if her daughter went to bed hungry for days, not starve her to teach a point. A mother would have protected her from every detail of her childhood, she didn't have a mother, so no one could tell not to call Clint.

She could see the outline of a fence when she heard a muffled, "Nat, are you okay?" from the speaker.

Two stones came into view and she gasped audibly at the realization of what she was looking at. "Come find me," she said before ending the call.

Weeds covered over the last names on both headstones. She pulled the weeds to uncover her first ever cover, her original alias. Rostov. Before she was Natalia Romanova and any variations of that, she was named Anna Rostov, the toddler. It was quickly changed at the Red Room, she had forgotten entirely that she wasn't born a Natalia. The grave was sad, maybe flowers would help, maybe it belonged the way it was. She sat in between the two stones and stared at the grass. This where she came from, this was who she was. She could cry but her father wouldn't wipe away the tears so what even was the point? It was hours, she didn't move. Natasha Romanoff was lost.

She found herself back at a motel in Stalingrad very late that night. She wouldn't sleep, she would sit the dark and take pity on herself or not think about it at all or just wish to die herself. Instead she did nothing, she sat on her bed and attempted to keep an empty head. Maybe it worked or maybe she thought about her parents all night without realizing it. She'd never know.

It didn't surprise her when she saw the first hints of sunlight through the window. She wasn't keeping track of time but she had assumed it'd been several hours. As dawn crept up on her footsteps did the same outside of her door. He would knock first and she'd make no indications of opening the door. He started to pick the lock. Natasha briefly wondered if she had been mistaken and the possibility that it could someone other than Clint breaking into her room. In that moment, she decided that she would welcome an assassin her to deliver death with the same enthusiasm she would Clint.

She dismissed that line of thought and turned over in her bed to find gray eyes piercing into her with all the intensity of a worried lover or _friend._ Clint took in her crumpled look and the absence of a gun pointed at his head. He was sitting beside her form before she fully recognized that he was moving. She lie still on the bed looking up at him. No one spoke as he moved his hand to brush a lock of hair from her face. Her lost look was too much for him. "Tasha," he whispered, "I'm here."

She wanted to scream that he wasn't, that he shouldn't be here (although Natasha knew that was her doing) instead she whispered something she didn't expect to come out so easily. "I found my parents, I want to plant flowers to make the headstones pretty."

That caught Clint off guard. His forehead creased as he ran playback on what she had just said. The worry in his eyes multiplied as the puzzle came together. He removed his shoes before laying fully beside her. She didn't move so he wrapped an arm around her waist. "I'll buy the flowers."

She wakes up before she knew she had fallen asleep. Her head is on Clint's chest and he has one hand in her hair and the other on her lower back. It feels good and guilty and so good. He is awake she knows and when she lifts her head to see his face, gray eyes are already looking back at her.

"I've missed you Tasha," he says in almost a growl, "I don't like when you run, even if you don't want me around, I need to know you're okay to sleep at night."

She dropped her head back into his chest, she didn't want look at him. "I want you around, that's an issue," she mumbles. She quickly untangles herself from him and diverts to the bathroom leaving behind a confused Clint.

A shower did wonders to Natasha, Clint had packed a bag before he left with some of his partner's clothing and she couldn't have been more thankful. The pair left the motel and into a busy street. Clint reached for her hand and she let him, raising red flags in every moral compass she could think of.

There wasn't much talking. Clint bought her breakfast and made sure every bite went down. They went to a florist next. Roses in varying colors were selected by Natasha. As they left the shop Clint presented Natasha with a sunflower, he told her it reminded him of her. A shadow of what could have been a smile struck her as she pinned the flower into her hair.

When they arrived at the fence bordering the grave, a panic rose in Natasha. If Clint noticed he didn't comment on it, instead he stripped off his jacket and began pulling weeds.

Natasha stood there for awhile, staring at the name while Clint worked. It all looked rather presentably when he finished.

He cleared his throat to get her attention. He gestured toward the flowers, asking permission to begin planting them. Natasha nodded and knelt beside him. The work as a team to dig holes and set the flowers. Natasha decides where each one will go and Clint obeys. It's a quiet, steady work, in the silence Natasha finds her tears.

It begins with watery eyes then an escaped droplet or two, she wipes them away like sweat without drawing attention from her partner. It worsens as her visions drowns in water and she can't see what she is doing doing. Clint slows down to look at her when a quiet sob escapes. Clint drops his flower pot and pulls Natasha into his arms. Suddenly sobs wrack her body. Clint pulls her onto his lap and cradles her like a child, he holds on tight to her trying to protect her from what has already been done. Her face buries into his shoulder and his head settles into her hair. She smells like sweat, dirt, and shampoo. He loves her.

When the crying fit calms, he doesn't let go. He rocks her for a bit then plays with her hair. Finally, he whispers into her ear, "I'm here, Tasha."

She curses to herself and pushes away from him, standing up and retreating to lean on the fence a few feet away . She scowls again when she realizes that she misses his body pressed against hers. They stand that way for a very long time.

"Don't say things like that," she broke the silence.

"You think I'm lying?" Clint questions with a bit of anger.

"Doesn't matter, I don't want you to say things like that." Natasha shifts uncomfortably.

"I wasn't done, Natasha."

She looks up curiously, "Excuse me?"

"Holding you. I wasn't finished holding you."

Natasha laughs bitterly, "I'm not yours to be holding, I'm not your Laura."

Clint stands to lean on the fence next to Natasha, "You're my Tasha. The one I tried really hard to not love, it didn't work. Either way I'm going to be there for you. I won't sleep until I know you're safe even if it means tracking you down in Russia in the middle of the night, you know I'd go much further for you. I can't help it when it's you."

Natasha turned to face him, "You love her, Clint, I know you do."

"Of course I love my wife. I never fell in love with her like I did with you. I loved her as the woman I was having a child with, I married with the intent of giving my son the family he deserved. We get along well but it doesn't mean I love her like I love you."

Natasha sighed, "You're an honorable man and I can't let myself be the reason you're dishonorable."

His hands found her waist and he pulled her closer then dipped his head to whisper in her ear, "Like I could ever deny you anything, I'm yours. I'll be what you need me to be when you need me to be it."

Her hands went to his neck and he lifted his head to face her. There was hesitation in her eyes before complete ignorance. She pulled him down to kiss him fully, she melted into his firm arms as he pulled her closer. She noted how incredibly firm his body felt and how rough his hands felt as one snaked underneath her shirt to massage her lower back.

This was over far too soon in both parties opinions but Natasha caught sight of her unfinished planting and felt compelled to finish right away. Clint helped set it up just as she pictured it, it was a beautiful patch in the dreary graveyard.

While Clint disposed of the trash, Natasha overlooked the finished project, a gorgeous mix of red, pink, and white roses. She'd be back to weed and organize the plot. Until then this would do.

When they reached New York the next day they went to a safe house Natasha kept in the heart of the city. Clint crashed on her bed as soon as they walked through the door, he was exhausted from the extensive travelling done in a short period of time.

While Clint slept like a rock, Natasha unpacked before going out for Chinese takeout. When she arrived back Clint was just waking. She dropped the food off and wandered into the bedroom. He was sitting up. He looked at her seriously. "Thank you for letting come to you. And I'm really sorry about your parents." It was the first mention to grief due to the death of a loved one to be directed at her, ever.

She didn't know how to react, what happened these past few months? How did everything get so mixed up? Natasha sat beside him on the bed, "Clint, SHIELD fell, and my parents are dead. And I want to thank you for finding me but I'll due it in a way we'll regret." As the urge to sleep with Clint resurfaced the guilt for wanting a married man did as well.

Clint smirked and marveled at how she still looked deadly when declaring her weaknesses. He inched her closer before taking hold of chin and kissed her roughly for a moment before slowing down to really taste Natasha Romanoff. This kiss held this time as Natasha couldn't find the motivation to pull away. The pair sank deeper on the bed, Clint's hands found her hair, the side of her breasts, and her waist.

Clint moaned slightly as Natasha began kissing her way up his jawline to the ear, when she returned eagerly to his lips his hands were pushing up the hem of her shirt. His hands on bare skin felt criminally good, she wanted him.

Just as his hands brushed her exposed cleavage, an annoying jingle broke out beside them. Clint's phone flashed "Laura" as the jingle continued to interrupt their activities. It was cold water for Natasha. She pushed herself off of him and grabbed her shirt and fled from the bedroom. She thinks Clint may have called for her but she couldn't stay with him any longer.

She sat on the kitchen counter with her shirt in her hand letting the guilt consume her while the Chinese food cooled beside her. Clint stayed in the room for a while, she briefly wondered if he took the phone call. What if he were in there now telling her he loved her? He'd be right but it still hurt that for the number of times they had saved each other lives they couldn't live the life they wanted, or she wanted.

By the time Clint came out Natasha was eating cold takeout, shirt on. She had her speech prepared before he could even get a good look at her. "Its frustration probably induced by the last few months. I need to address it so I can move on. It doesn't mean having sex with you, I can find someone willing to have a meaningless night. It's tension that needs to be relieved that's it. You should probably leave now."

She had predicted some ways he could react, none which included this small chuckle he was doing as he knelt in front of her took a hand in his and brought to his lips before murmuring, "Like I could ever deny you anything, Tasha." Then he kissed the hand slowly.

"Clint," she warned as his lips moved to the base of her neck.

"You're not going to sleep with a random guy, Tasha. We've crossed every morally unacceptable line there is for this circumstance, and I'm here to give you whatever you need."

"If I slept with you, Clint, it wouldn't be meaningless," Natasha said vainly, as she slide a hand onto his shoulder encouraging him to continue.

Clint stopped sucking on a sweet spot on her neck to look directly at her. He had a mischievous smirk on his face. "I'm counting on that."

 **I really need feedback on this, everyone. I've been toying with the idea to add a few more chapters, but that will depend entirely on what you guys think. Thanks again.**


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